State Council approves Qingdao development plan

The State Council approved an overall development plan (2011-2020) for Qingdao city, East China’s Shandong province on Jan 14.

According to the plan, the permanent population in the city’s central areas should be controlled to within 6.1 million, and the construction area be controlled to within 660 square kilometers by 2020.

To achieve this, the government of the city should make use of underground space resources, improve the utility efficiency of city land and protect arable land, especially primary farmland.

It urged careful planning of the west coastal new area of Qingdao, and said the intercity transportation infrastructure should be further improved to build a multi-level transportation system.

The State Council also urged building Qingdao into a resource-conserving and environmentally-friendly city by weeding out backward industrial capacity, strictly controlling pollutant emissions and promoting green buildings.

The protection of historic culture and characteristic landscape was also underlined in the document. It called for the preservation of historical and cultural heritages as well as areas and buildings, particularly the Great Wall site that was built in Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC) and the Lang’ya Terrace and the other cultural relics.